Vengeance: A Novel (Quirke) Read Online Free

through the transom over the front door. The leads of the transom broke up the light and reassembled it into a bright, complicated shape, like a birdcage.
    Maggie loved Ashgrove. She had been coming here with her family every year for as long as she could remember. The house had been old when she was young, yet she had the secret notion that it was somehow accompanying her through the years, keeping pace with her, its most favored visitor. For the rest of the year, when she was not here, she missed the old place, as she would miss a beloved dog, or a friend, even. A pity there had to be so many people in the house. She always made sure to arrive a day or two before the others, and to leave a day or two after they were gone. That was bliss, being on her own. She loved especially to lie awake early in the morning, the newly risen sun striping the counterpane and the house all around her stretching and creaking under the light of the new day. Solitude was her balm. She had never married. There had been offers, but she had wished to live her life in her own way, according to her own wishes and rules, without the interference of a husband.
    She had spent most of the afternoon reading in her room, or trying to read, sitting by the window in the faded green armchair, her favorite. The window looked down on a secluded corner of the garden, and now and then she would close her book—Agatha Christie; rather dull—marking her place with her thumb, and watch the blackbirds and the rabbits playing at the edge of the lawn. The rabbits, two or three of them, would venture out from the long grass under the trees, the birds would fly down quickly, and the rabbits would scamper back for shelter; this little game was repeated over and over. She supposed it was not really play, but she liked to think it was.
    She had delayed for as long as she could before leaving the sanctuary of her room. Her father was in one of his moods and had deliberately said something to upset Mrs. Hartigan, and of course there were ructions that would go on at least till teatime. Her father had suffered a stroke three years previously and was confined to a wheelchair and therefore was bored and prone to rancorous ill temper, although even in his heyday he had not been exactly of a tranquil disposition. It pleased him to annoy people, to set them against each other. This afternoon it was Mrs. Hartigan’s turn to suffer the edge of his tongue, and having started that particular fire he had then settled down contentedly to warm his hands before it. Mrs. Hartigan kept house for the weeks when the two families were here, and acted as caretaker for the remainder of the year. She was touchy, was Mrs. Hartigan—Maggie suspected she considered herself too good for such menial work—and took offense easily. And of course it always fell to Maggie to smooth her ruffled feathers. Standing in the hall now, still admiring the flowers, Maggie smiled to herself; ruffled feathers, yes—Mrs. Hartigan did look a bit like a plump excitable old hen.
    Samuel Delahaye was in the lounge, which was what the main living room had always been called, listening to a program on the wireless. He had parked his wheelchair next to the sideboard on which the set stood, its green eye pulsing, and had his ear pressed up close to the mesh of the speaker; it was one of his amusements to pretend to be hard of hearing. He was a big man, broad-shouldered and barrel-chested, with a swept-back mane of silver hair; Maggie believed he modeled himself on William Butler Yeats—certainly he was as vain as the poet surely must have been. When she had entered the room and shut the door, and before she had spoken even a word, he flapped a hand irritably in her direction, as if she were making a commotion of some sort and interfering with his enjoyment of the program, which seemed to be about bees. He did not look at her.
    She sighed. Her sister-in-law was seated on the long beige sofa in front of the fireplace,